The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ ― A Full Critical Edition

Love's early-15th-century translation of the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi was the most important literary version of the life of Christ in English before modern times, says Sargent, but identified itself so closely with pre-Reformation religious values that it has nearly disappeared from sight. This edition differs from his 1992 Garland edition and from that in the Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies series, by being fully critical and containing an apparatus reporting the readings of all three groups of manuscripts. It also takes into account recent discussions of Love's use of Wycliffite forms of discourse and the question of whether Mirror and Archbishop Thomas Arundel's Lambeth Constitutions of 1409 marked the end-point of medieval English vernacular theology. He assumes a general familiarity with Middle English, but does include a glossary of more obscure terms. Distributed in the US by the David Brown Book Company. Annotation c2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Michael Sargent is Professor in the Department of English, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He has published a number of books, including De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer, 1989) and Nicholas Love at Waseda (Boydell & Brewer, 1997).